someone said true love was dead
by Ivory Muse
Summary: Drabbles written for Maiko Week. disclosure— it can only get easier from here, this business of being a father.
1. lantern

He's not supposed to hang a lantern for her, because she's not really dead, she never existed in the first place. Azula, prim and proper and (smirking), puts one up outside her bedroom to honor dear Grandfather's memory; Father, as cold and remote as the Water Tribes, glides past the decorations without a second glance.

"She loved purple," he murmurs to Mai, by the turtleduck pond while the rest of the palace revels. He has never felt more hollow, tying the strings to a tree branch, watching his sad little memorial flutter in the breeze like an oversized plum. She deserves so much more than this, from the boy who killed her.

"I'm sorry she's gone," Mai says quietly and peppers his face with kisses, nose and cheekbones and forehead.

The tears begin to fall, then, but she doesn't laugh, not once, just holds his hand very tight.


	2. façade

_Do you feel anything, Mai?_

 _Not unless I'm commanded to._

Her parents demanded obedience and silence from her, sacrificing her soul for more gold pieces to rub together— and they got it. Azula demanded unfailing loyalty from her, perpetually watching for signs of independent thought with eagle-hawk eyes— and she got it. Mai embroidered and made polite conversation and bit down on her tongue, and then she grew up to shoot knives at moving, screaming targets, and all of this had to be perfectly equal to her if she was to survive.

 _It doesn't matter. Nothing will ever matter._

Choosing to love Zuko is hard. Choosing, at all, is excruciatingly hard. I care. I care about you. I care about what happens to you and whether you live or die, I'm vulnerable and I can't turn this off you fucking bastard I'm crying and laughing and I can't hide any longer—

He leaves; between her and his ideals she'll always be in second place. So she shuts down nice and tight until she sees him face to face at the Boiling Rock and then her rage bubbles out, magma-hot, more pain than she's ever shown before. The mask crumbles around him, it's never been a match for him, and though it's dangerous and risky and horrible she just can't let him get out of her head.

 _I like it when you express yourself._

She saves him, because he's the asshole who wants her wrapped safely in cotton wool but he's also the reason her heart still pumps blood instead of acid, and if Azula's shaky lightning bolt contorts her into death that's okay, that's okay, because at least for about five minutes her drawing breath had a purpose.

 _Do you feel anything, Mai?_

 _More than I ever thought I could._


	3. disclosure

He finally finds her in front of the vanity in his mother's old room, brushing her hair with long, vicious strokes. "Are you okay?" he demands. "I've been looking everywhere for you, for hours! Did someone die?"

She breaks out of her trance long enough to glare at him so fiercely he steps back. "Don't order me around, _your majesty_ ," she snaps, throwing down the hairbrush. "No, nobody's dead. Rather the opposite."

What in seven hells is she talking about— oh, _fuck_.

"You're pregnant?" It's more of a squeak than a question.

"Yes." She turns to face him, wearing her defiant expression like a challenge. "Pregnant."

"But... you're only eighteen. We've been using those contraceptive herbs."

"And we've been screwing like rabbits since I was fifteen," she points out, none-too-gently. "The herbs failed. I'm four weeks late. It was bound to happen."

His father was married to his mother at eighteen. Before he blasted her out of every painting in the palace, there was a dusty portrait hanging in her (separate) bedroom— their (forced) wedding portrait. He still remembers the saccharine little smile on her usually solemn face, the defiance as Father stared forward, daring anyone to question his claim. He still remembers the disdainful curl of Father's lip when he called him _bastard_ and patted Azula's head.

How history repeats itself. No, for Agni and all the spirits' fucking sakes, he can't think of Ozai right now or he's going to lose it completely. He's going to turn on his heel and run out of this room and leave Mai to brush her hair in front of that mirror forever.

Zuko sits down on the overstuffed settee and digs his nails into his forearms, _hard_. The pain helps him focus, and when he speaks again his voice is calm, foreign. "We have to get married."

"I figured," she says, just as calm. One wrong move and the whole room blows up. "You should be happy— you're fertile, there's going to be an heir. Might even be a boy."

"Damn it, Mai, stop talking to me like a courtesan," he snaps, reaching for her forearms. He's never been terribly good at keeping up a charade. "Do you think that's what I'm worried about? Of all things?"

"I'm scared, you idiot," she spits back, wresting free from his grip. "We're not ready to have a baby. We don't know shit about raising kids."

" _You're_ scared?" he echoes incredulously. "He's— he's in me. In my blood, in my head, and I can't get him out. I—"

He rests a hand on her stomach, splays his fingers a little. It's flat, for now. Just an empty promise, an empty threat.

"I'll kill them. Ruin them." It's impossible to describe, a big crater in the center of his brain, and impossible to make her understand; how the smell of burning meat and the word 'worthless' and anything coming suddenly towards his head make it all go cold inside.

"Stop it," she commands, her tone sharp and biting. "Ozai wasn't _overtaken_ by anything. Nobody forced him to raise his fists or open his mouth. He made his choices, and if I thought you could make the same ones, I wouldn't still be here." She stalks over to the window. "Aren't you worried that I'll turn the children into emotionally constipated wrecks, just like my parents did to me? I've got all the maternal instinct of your average boulder."

"Of course not," he protests immediately, wanting to go over to her but unsure of whether she'd welcome his touch. "You're nothing like them; I wouldn't have married a social-climber out for my money. And I've seen you around Appa— if you're good with animals, you'll probably be good with kids. I think."

She places her head in her hands, and that's when he takes her in his arms— she doesn't pull away this time. When she looks up, he sees that her eyes are wet. "I love you," he says, because he has little else to offer. "We'll get married, and... we'll work something out. There's worse luck than having a baby."

"Easy to say when you won't be pushing it out," she says with a shaky laugh. "I can't believe we made a person."

"Yeah," he exhales, and emits a shaky laugh of his own. "We made a person."

He's terrified. Absolutely fucking terrified, down to the core. He'll have to send Uncle a lot of letters, explaining the whole thing and apologizing profusely for his lengthy asshole stage as a teenager and begging for parenting advice, and maybe then he'll go visit Ozai in prison and break his nose because he's pretty this was meant to be a happy occasion, and arrange a whole wedding—

learn how to be a father in eight months—

But this child will be part of the woman up against his chest; the woman who saved his life, once, would have died so that he could go on. It can only get better, easier, from here.


End file.
